The motif of the reluctance to see the king in Lope de Vega's El 'Villano en Su Rincon'

In 1890 the German scholar A.L.Stiefel published an article which for the first time solidly established an instance of textual relationship between Spanish and English dramas in the case of James Shirley's The Opportunity and Tirso de Molina's El castigo del penseque. In an intriguing footnote he declared that another five plays by Shirley had Spanish origin, and later successfully substantiated one of these cases: The Young Admiral, based on Lope de Vega's Don Lope de Cardona. Through a study of the motif of 'the reluctance to see the king' in another pair of plays proposed by Stiefel--Lope de Vega's El villano en su rincon and Shirley's The Royal Master--the present article proposes a clear textual relationship, making good Stiefel's avowal in one more case.